Unlimited. Overselling. What do these terms mean to you? For some they stir instant shock and discredit. Many do not see the big picture of these selling strategies, but it’s not their fault.

Offering “unlimited space and bandwidth” on hosting plans is not something that should be seen as seedy or misleading. The true reason for offering such plans, I believe, is offering customers peace of mind. Build and then grow your website without worries of a ticking clock or a raising meter. What is so great about shared hosting is the ability customers have to use a very powerful web server - sometimes all to themselves for short periods of time. No matter what kind of plan a shared hosting customer is on, no matter how much space or bandwidth they have, one customer can never use the server “all to themselves” for a long period of time. This is where the topic of abuse comes in. A customer does not need to attempt to use all of their space or bandwidth to cause a problem on the server with CPU or memory. This is where the misunderstanding and bad rep of “unlimited” and “overselling” come into play, unfortunately.

Many believe that if a host gives what seems to be an unreasonable amount of resources - run. The negative outlook of overselling web hosts came about due to hosts which did not do it right or the clients that take advantage of the system. Many complaints stem from when a user tries to upload hundreds of videos and music, copyrighted or not, in an attempt to fill their account as fast as they can. This is not truly legitimate use of web hosting space. In the past, it made more sense to use your web hosting account for absolutely any file. Now there are specific services for storage and backup use. And with the popularity of media players and the way the iPhone is changing cell phones forever, why are some still using FTP to manage their entertainment? Luckily, this type of use is not as popular as it was in the past few years. I think offering “unlimited” is proving to be calmer than most thought. Though many hosts which offer unlimited plans are still not properly managing their servers and this continues the bad reputation of such plans. A server can have downtime due to abuse in many forms, the sizes of hosting plans largely have nothing to do with these outcomes.

This brings us to another problem that arose from overselling. That’s the confusion of that term with another: overloading. Many assume that if a host offers very generous hosting plans that their web servers are filled with bulging user accounts, therefore, equaling slow services and downtime. As said before, many hosts are not properly setting up and maintaining their servers to begin with, minus the consideration of what plans they offer. But I believe that all of the larger web hosts have really made overselling quite an art form and many customers are able to take a very fair advantage from it. Will we continue to see the terms unlimited and overselling in the web hosting industry? I do not think they are going away any time soon.